The German basketball team of the U18 juniors is the German selection of male youth up to the age of 18 in basketball . This competes in international championships for the German Basketball Federation (DBB) and is currently being trained by Alan Ibrahimagic .
The best place in an international championship was fourth place at the U18 European Championship (EM) in Austria in 1986 , when the team with players like Henning Harnisch , Moritz Kleine-Brockhoff and Henrik Rödl , who became European champions in the men's category in 1993 , after four Victories against Spain in five preliminary round games made it into the medal round, but lost the semi-finals and the small final for the bronze medal there. Before that, the team had twice achieved fifth place with later NBA players such as Detlef Schrempf and Christian Welp and later European men's champions such as Stephan Baeck , Michael Koch , Jens Kujawa and Kai Nürnberger . After the splitting up of the leading European basketball nations, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia , the selection could no longer achieve top placements in the European Championship finals in the 1990s, instead they temporarily fell out of the group of 16 leading European basketball nations belonging to Division A of the respective age group. At the European Championship finals in 2015, the selection returned to Division A and reached eighth place, the best placement for almost 20 years.
At the renowned Albert Schweitzer tournament organized by the DBB itself , which is counted as the unofficial U-18 World Cup with participants from mostly all continents , it was enough to make it to the finals in 2010 when the selection lost to Australia. Six years later the selection remained undefeated and was able to win the tournament for the first time against Serbia in the final, with Kostja Mushidi being awarded as the tournament's MVP . In 2018, the team managed to defend the title without defeat during the tournament. It was the first title defense at an Albert Schweitzer tournament by a European team. Jonas Mattisseck and Hendrik Drescher were also elected to the All-Tournament-Team, Mattisseck was also named MVP of the tournament.
